A Year Ago Today
by Lady Knight 1512
Summary: A year ago today, Blaine was making seven promises to the love of his life over a gum wrapper ring. SEASON 4 SPOILERS!


**Title:** A Year Ago Today  
**Chapter:** 1/1**  
Author:** ladyknight1512  
**Fandom:** Glee  
**Characters:** Blaine Anderson, mentions of Kurt  
**Pairing:** Kurt/Blaine mentioned  
**Genre:** Angst, with a glimmer of hope at the end.  
**Rating: **G**  
Summary:** A year ago today, Blaine was making seven promises to the love of his life over a gum wrapper ring.  
**Spoilers:** SEASON 4! Consider yourself warned.  
**Warning(s):** Klaine break up. If anything needs a warning, that does.  
**Word Count:** 600 (exactly!)  
**Disclaimer:** These characters are the property of FOX, and Ryan Murphy and Co.  
**Author's Note:** I've started countless other Klaine fics in the last year; this is the first I've ever finished, and it's typical that, while everyone else is writing fluff to deal with the trauma of spoilers, I'm coping by writing angst.

**- o – o – o -**

A lot can change in a year, Blaine knows. After all, a couple of years ago he was stopped by a boy on a staircase, a boy who became his best friend. Fast forward a year and Blaine had transferred schools and was curled around that same boy in his bed, not quite able to believe how lucky he was to have so much love in his life at such a young age.

But those days are behind him now and he can never go back to them. As much as he might wish otherwise, he's slogging through the final hours of school before Christmas break and fighting off waves of nausea when he thinks back to what he was doing a year ago today, to the promises he was making over a gum wrapper ring.

It's almost too much to remember how earnestly he'd meant those promises when he'd made them. And he feels like such a child when he thinks of how certain he'd been that what they'd had would last forever.

While it's true that a part of Blaine will always love Kurt, it's also true that that love will never be the same again. And the rest of those promises? Well, they just no longer apply. Because, yeah, Blaine had surprised Kurt all right. With an "It's-for-the-best/It's-better-this-way" break up. It is no longer Blaine's place to defend Kurt, right or wrong, and in the first days of his return to Ohio from New York, when Kurt was calling all the time, Blaine never picked up once. Eventually, Kurt stopped calling.

He'd made exactly two batches of cookies over the last year, as promised, and that would have to do. Blaine just tries not to think too hard about the man who will get to shower Kurt with all the kisses he wants.

As for the last promise, Blaine sort of hopes that could be his last, lingering gift to Kurt, the one thing Kurt can carry with him all his life, no matter where he goes or what he does: the knowledge that he is perfect and worthy of love, _because_ he is flawed, rather than despite it.

So yeah, don't tell Blaine that a lot can change in a year; he already knows. What he's learning, though, is that things change in less time too.

It's been two months since he broke both their hearts in a park in New York and some days are hard. There are days when he wakes up and the hurt and loneliness are a dark, yawning gulf, swallowing him up. Those are the days he wears his brightest bow tie and his biggest show smile, parts of a carefully constructed facade to distract from his trembling hands and deadened eyes.

But, and this is what surprises him the most, those days are becoming fewer, more good days eating up his weeks. Good days when he can think about Kurt, not constantly, sometimes just for a second, with a smile instead of tears.

Blaine is not the same person he was last Christmas and he finds that he's okay with that because it means that next Christmas he'll be a different person again. Next Christmas he'll be finishing his first semester at college. He might be in New York, or California, or somewhere he's never even imagined himself. He might be single still, or single _again_, or he might be someone else's boyfriend. Who knows, he might even be with Kurt again.

A lot changes in a year and Blaine can't wait to see how he'll be one of them.

**- o – o – o -**

**A/N2:** So, obviously, I'm going to be devastated when all this happens, no matter how much I try to prepare myself beforehand. And while I've enjoyed reading the reunion fics that have cropped up in the wake of this news, I think there's something be said as well, about Kurt and Blaine overcoming and learning to move on. That is, after all, a part of growing up too.


End file.
